As an
overall the recordings were great which make our life easier on the final mix, some of the main
concerns we had were that the bass guitar it was going to be tricky to make it sound with enough
attack. We also thought that the lack of room microphone on the drums was going
to make it sound too weak, but at the mix it sounded so ideal that it would not
have made much difference for the kind of sound we got at the end.
We learned how to make use of space grouping our instruments, how to make use of external hardware and how to work as a team in order to achieve the best sound.
After we finished with the levelling, panning, compressing, gating and equalising we start adding effects and analog processing.
For the vocals and backing vocals we used an internal bus send to a different channel that we sent to the desk then sent it to the external reverb processor and after we add an equaliser to make the vocals sound more intimate, more close to the listener's ears.
The patch bay connection in order to achieve the reverberant vocals that we waned.
The reverb unit settings for the vocals and backing vocals reverb.
We used an in-box reverb for the snare that was gated and compressed outside the box.
We managed to get a punch effect from the snare and by compression we make the drums tighter which was exactly what we wanted for our song.
For the base guitar we used the build-in Audient parametric equaliser to make some space for the kick.
The acoustic guitar was the hardest sound to get right because had a lot of mistakes was not in time had a lot of sound variations, for the acoustic guitar we used a compressor and a graphic equaliser in order to make it sound acceptable.
Final Mix of the project was pretty much straight forward because at the beginning of this module we focus on the quality of the recordings.
When we first entered in studio we started levelling all the tracks and then panning them in order to have an idea of how the song will sound. All our tracks were recorded by a click track to sync them easy.
When we first listened to the song we figured out that some instruments were not in time with the click track, so we had to quantise somehow the audio tracks, because we recorded in Pro Tools we had the "elastic time" option and if you know what type of sound an instrument produces you can quantise easily every audio track.
The second problem we encountered was the levels of the recordings, some of them had high variations but we compressed those channels, after we finished with the compression we used equalisation on every instrument in order to make some room and avoid the frequency masking.
The drums were gated in order to reduce the spilling and the overheads panned.
Recording places:Basement studio 1 ,
Piano rehearsal room second floor and studio alpha and 4 from Ealing Studios.
The most of the project was recorded in basement one approximately 16 hours and
we recorded there : vocals , harmonics , base guitar , electric guitar ,
acoustic guitar , drums and the rough part of the piano.
Some of the difficult parts we
encountered when we first came in contact with the studio were to set up all
the equipment and figure out how stuff is connected together.
We recorded the piano to have a lead
for the vocals , the main purpose for recording the vocals first was to give
some time to artists to rehearsal and to record the other instruments around
the vocal recordings.
The vocals and harmonics took almost
8 hours to record and we used a few recording techniques to figure out which
one will fit the best for our recording purpose. We used 3 microphones close
together and three different distance marked on the floor , we recorded 3 times
and choose the best distance and the best microphone , because the SEz3300 was
the best for our short distance and because we had a really tight space in the
live room we chosen to record the vocals , we also record the backing vocals
and the harmonics of the voice with the same microphone.Because we didn’t want
to have spill on vocals and to have a lead instrument we recorded the piano with a pair of c414 in
ortf recording technique to get the most of the piano.On our second session we
were supposed to record the drums mainly but the drummer was late and we
recorded the guitars , for the acoustic guitar we used a spaced cardioid pair
and following the 3 to 1 rule to reduce the phase cancelation we placed one mic
near the resonance box and one near the cords , the mic near the cords gave us
touch of the cords and some high frequencies. We used the same recording
technique for the overheads of the drum kit but instead of using condenser we
used a pair of Sennheiser MD421 microphones we initially thought that the
dynamic microphones wouldn’t not be as sensitive as condensers but we got the
sound that we wanted. For the base guitar we used a Sennheiser MD421 with the
amplifier against the wall and the microphone was placed between the centre and
the edge of the cone , we know that the low frequencies tends to build up near
the walls and the corners of the room but placing the amp near the wall we got
reed of the low frequency that bounced all over the room , for the electric
guitar we used the same technique but we add a condenser mic placed far away
and a bit off axis to get some ambiance an to get high frequencies we used the
u87 of axis to to reduce the sensibility of the microphone.
The drum kit was recorded with 5
microphones 2 Sennheiser MD421 for overheads we used a pair of Shure sm57 and a large
diaphragm for the kick we had a lot of problems with the drum recording because
the sound of the drums sound was poor and we had to tune them by ourselves and
to use a lot of clothes for the kick in order to make it sound good.
For the acoustic piano we went into a
rehearsal room which had a big piano and we used a pair of DA4011 cardioid placed
in ortf stereo recording technique , and we got a great stereo image of the
piano we also tried the blomline recording technique with a pair of C414 placed
one on top of each other recorded in figure of eight and for electric piano and
organ we used a korg triton .
As an overall , the recording was a
success and the best thing is that we learn lots of great new things like microphone
positioning using the audient console and making the most of an live room , we
meet great people and very good artist and in my opinion the most of a
recording is made by a good performer and a good instrument , we took care of
phase cancelation , spilling and stereo image overall I had a great experience
with my group.
Bob Marley
Exodus album was released in 1977 and the engineers behind the scene were Karl
Pitterson , Guy Bidmead and Ferry Barham .The label which released exodus album
was Island ILPS 19498 the record format was 12” vinyl and was released in
Italy.
The
recording techniques used are: two takes for the vocals with different microphones
, the great thing about those two takes are that the sound engineers switch
between the two recordings thru the track for a grater sound quality some
pieces of recording might be clipped somewhere and that is why they switch
between them and for instance a microphone can catch higher frequencies and the
other no.The main rule of Bob’s recording is never mix down too much because of
the quality loss , the guitar is always overdubbed and it follows the keys and
vocals he also prefers more lead vocal .For some reverberant sound they use an
EMT Echo plate , spring reverb maybe some Urei Compression a little bit of
delay and ADT for backing vocals. When the “Exodus” album was recorded the equipment
was very limited , when Bob was recording he liked to play different types of
distortion thru amps , the sound engineers achieved a great guitar fuzz out of
the Helios desk by overdriving the line. Because of the lack of multi track Bob
Marley’s sound engineers recorded the drum kit by putting 2 microphones one for
the kick drum and one for the rest of the drum kit great sense of solid sounds.Bob
used in 1977 a Newmann U87 microphone which ran into a Helios console and then
an 1176 compressor.
Bob Marley was born Robert Nesta Marley on February 6,1945.Bob's early life was spent in rural community of Nine Miles.He moved to Trench Town where Bob Marley found his music talents.A lifelong source of inspiration ,Bob immortalized Trench Town in his songs "No Woman No Cry"(1974),"Trench Town Rock"(1975) and "Trench Town"(1983)
By the early 1960s the island's music industry was beginning to take shape, and its development gave birth to an indigenous popular Jamaican music form called ska.
"Bob Marley - Turn yout lights down low" was released on 3 June 1977 as a part of "Exodus" albume.
"Bob Marley feat Lauryn Hill - Turn your lights down low" was released in 1999 , the project was made by his daughter in law and she used his old recordings in order to finalise the project.
Thursday, 14 March 2013
SOUND RECORDING TECHNIQUES ASSIGNMENT PART I.
INTRODUCTION
The main propose with this project is to get some knowledge about all the process that needs to be done when recording a song. This concerns the correct microphone positions and the different microphone techniques that can be used in order to get the best sound when recording either musical instruments or vocals, as well as the types of microphone that match better with each instrument, voice, ambient room etc.
With this project we also get more familiar with the studio connections, mixing consoles and the way how everything is connected.
Taking in count all this details above, we have to record a song either chosen by ourselves or of our own.
SONG
The song we have chosen is "turn your lights down low by bob marley". The version of the song we used as a guide for the recording was the one by Lauryn Hill.
SONG DETAILS
The song was written by Bob Marley and was realised on the album Exodus (1977). Then his father together with Bob's sister-in-law Lauryn Hill, remixed the song, which became famous on the Billboard charts and all over the world with the album "Chant Down Babylon" which was a remixed album made by many hip hop and rock artists, covering some Bob Marley's songs.
GROUP
Our group is conformed by Jade Stepherson, Sebastian Stanciu and Andres Caicedo.
SONG PERFORMING
The main voice and some chorus of the song were recorded by Jade, as she is an amazing singer. The keys, Bass and Acoustic guitar were recorded by me. We also invited some very good musicians who helped us with the drums (Esteban Caicedo) and electric guitar (Al Burgess).
RECORDING PROCESS
Our recording process was done mainly in the basement studio 1. We spent about two studio sessions of 8 hours each on the 27th of February and 6th of march.
Some of the most difficult parts we found along the session was the setting up of the studio, microphones and hardware equipment such as the mixing console and microphone patchbay as we did not know how to route it throw the general patchbay. We had some problems at the beginning with the signal routing from the mixing console to pro tools as well.
All the problems were sorted out with some help assistance.
Once we were familiarized mainly with the mixing console and the signal going from the console to the DAW, all the recording was quite quick, as the musicians were pretty good and knew the song very well.
Some of the time we spent was on trying different microphone position techniques, and different kinds of microphones for each vocals and musical instruments, all in order to get the best sound quality.
SOME OF THE MICROPHONE TECHNIQUES WE USED
ORTF STEREO
We used this technique on the piano in order to get a wider stereo perception between the low to the high keys. This technique simulates more accurately the human hearing, so we can have the same hearing that the pianist had when he recorded the piano in the song.
The microphones used for this technique were a pair of AKG C414.
SPACED PAIR CARDIOID
We used this technique for the acoustic guitar, placing one microphone in front of the resonance box of the guitar and the other near the frets, taking care of some phasing cancelations as in this type of microphone position this problem would be very easy to get. In this case, we followed the 3 to 1 rule to make sure we would not have phase problems.
The same technique was used for the over heads when recording drums, as we wanted to have a wider spectrum mainly for the cymbals. When testing the drums, the over heads would give us some phasing problems with some of the drums. So we first tasted the overheads in other to avoid any phase cancellations and then the rest of the microphones.
BASS GUITAR
For the bass guitar recording, we put the amplifier agains the wall in order to have a clearer sound, as the live room we recorded was very small, and the low frequencies would bounce all aver the room. we used the dynamic SENNHEISER MD 421 placed between the centre and the edge of the cone in order to get some high frequencies.
ELECTRIC GUITAR
We used two microphone for the electric guitar. the SENNHEISER MD 421 which was placed near the amplifier cone, and the condenser NEUMANN U67 located a bit farther from the amp, as we wanted to have a cleaner sound with the MD 421 and some ambience and high frequencies with the U67.
VOICE RECORDING
As the condenser SE Z3300 is a microphone that can be used for many recording applications, we used it for vocals recording, and the sound was really clean. It is a big advantage when you have the option of High Pass Filter on the mic, so we used it in order to cancel some room noise.
As an over all, the recording was pretty good, and the song sounds great. With the right microphones on the right instruments, and taking care of any phase cancellation problems, which are the most important things we have to take in count when recording, everything is going to be fine.
The
musicians play a very important role in a good finished recording process, as I think it represents a 50 percent of the song quality.
When at the end you listen to the song and feel that everything sounds good like if it did not need to be processed and mixed, so you can say that you did a good job as a recording engineer.
